Refund Policy

Last updated: [date] · If anything important changes, you'll see it at the top of this page.

WholeRecord (thewholerecord.com) is run by me, Joseph Griffiths, a sole trader based in Spain. Purchases are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record. That means Paddle is legally the seller for your purchase. Paddle takes your payment and issues your receipt [CONFIRM: exact Paddle entity].

The short version

• Before you pay, you see exactly what was readable from your uploads. The whole reading arrives straight after payment.
• Refund requests go to Paddle, the company that takes your payment, and Paddle decides them. Because a reading is delivered instantly and you choose to receive it straight away, it is not returnable once it has been delivered.
• If something genuinely went wrong on our side, tell us within 14 days of purchase: we will ask Paddle to refund you and will not contest it. Often the quickest fix is a free re-run with your recovery code (see "Re-runs" below).
• Need to act now? Email hello@thewholerecord.com with your order reference. "How to ask", at the bottom, has the details.

What you're buying

A reading is a one-off digital purchase (Part Record report £39 · Whole Record report £69). It is made from the reports you upload and delivered straight away, on screen and as a PDF you keep. There is no subscription and nothing recurring.

What you are buying is a complete search, not a particular result. Every reading looks for the same full list: every difficulty pattern, every record-level signal, and every look-alike explanation. Your reading sets all of it out, including each thing that was looked for and not recorded in your reports, along with the look-alike explanations that were considered and what your reading says about each one. Some sets of reports contain the patterns the search looks for, and some do not. We tell you this before you buy. Both are finished readings, and both cost the same.

A reading that records none of those patterns is telling you something true about the reports, not about the person they describe. School reports capture how a child looked in class. A quieter child, including one working hard to keep difficulties from showing, can leave little or no trace in reports like these. It is a reading of what your school records do and do not describe. It does not describe a person.

What you see before you pay

• A capture receipt: the exact list of what was readable from the photos or documents you uploaded. If something couldn't be read, you see that before paying, not after.
• No findings are shown before payment. You see the reading itself only after you buy.

Who decides refunds

Paddle is the seller for the transaction, not just the payment processor. That means your purchase is covered by Paddle's own buyer terms and refund policy, which you agree to at checkout. Refund requests are made to Paddle and decided by Paddle.

A reading is made for you and delivered straight away, on screen and as a PDF you keep, and you choose to receive it the moment you buy. Because of that, the 14-day "change your mind" window that covers most online shopping does not apply to a reading. So a reading is not returnable once it has been delivered.

Paddle can still decide to refund a purchase if it wants to. That is Paddle's own decision, not ours.

You can raise a request with Paddle's buyer support [CONFIRM: Paddle's support address/link], and you can always email us too.

When we will back your refund request

If something genuinely went wrong on our side, tell us within 14 days of your purchase. Genuinely wrong means things like a reading that was never made, or one that never reached you. We will ask Paddle to refund you, and we will not contest it.

Often the quickest fix is not a refund but a fresh run: your recovery code gives you up to three more runs within 30 days, and a run that fails does not use one up (see "Re-runs" below). So if a re-run fails for a technical reason on our side, the first fix is simply another run at no cost. If that happens within 14 days of your purchase and we cannot get a working run for you, tell us and we will back a refund request in the same way.

What we would not treat as a fault on our side

• Disagreeing with what your reading says, including a reading in which none of the patterns searched for were recorded in your reports. That is the complete result of the same full search, not a fault, and we tell you before you buy that it is a real possible outcome.
• Uploads that couldn't be read. The capture receipt showed you what was readable, and flagged anything that wasn't, before you paid.

In these cases we would not back a request ourselves. Refund requests are still decided by Paddle, and nothing here takes away a right you have under Paddle's terms or under consumer law.

Re-runs: up to three more runs, free, within 30 days

What a re-run is. Running your reading again, on reports you upload again. Your purchase includes your reading, plus up to three more runs within 30 days of purchase, using the recovery code we email with your receipt. You do not pay again.

Why you have to upload again. Privacy is the reason. We do not keep your reports or your reading after delivery. So there is nothing on our side to hand back to you, and nothing to pick up from where you left off. If something stops your reading from finishing, the only honest way to give you another go is to run it again, on reports you upload again. That is what your code does. It starts a fresh run. It does not fetch an old one back. Storing your reading so that you could resume it would be more convenient and much worse for your privacy, and we chose your privacy.

A failed attempt does not use up a re-run. A code that does not work costs you nothing, and a run that does not finish does not use up one of your three.

Re-runs are separate from refunds. The re-run allowance is a convenience. It does not extend your refund rights, and it does not replace them.

Your legal rights

Nothing in this policy takes away rights the law gives you as a consumer in the country where you live.

Your data is separate from any refund

Your right to have your data deleted (privacy notice, section 12) is separate from refunds. A refund request or decision does not affect it.

How to ask

Email hello@thewholerecord.com with your order reference and we'll aim to reply within 5 working days. If your question is about the payment itself (the charge, the receipt, or a refund request), you can also go straight to Paddle's buyer support [CONFIRM: Paddle's support address/link], because Paddle took your payment and refund requests are decided by Paddle.